When disaster strikes, it’s up to a cadre of city leaders to deploy the necessary resources to minimize the damage and safeguard their city’s population. Emergency managers set immediate and long-term strategies to reduce negative impact, often in collaboration with officials in other agencies and departments. In contrast, first responders provide real-time, on-the-ground support to... Read more »

This interview is an excerpt from GovLoop’s recent guide, What the Internet of Things Means for the Public Sector, which explores insights and best practices into how government is using automated machine-to-machine transactions and implementing IoT in the public sector. In 2000, the United States experienced a number of unusually severe wildfires. The previous year, NASA launched... Read more »

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr – these social media giants are just a few on a growing list of social networking platforms sprawling across the internet. Millions of people across the world use social media websites to connect, share and interact with others. According to a Pew report, 92 percent of teens in America today... Read more »

When he first joined the Navy 23 years ago, Kevin Hannes was taught a simple motto: listen, learn, and then lead. After retiring from the Navy, Hannes still felt the call to serve the American people. He soon joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), where he now serves as the Federal Coordinating Officer in Texas.... Read more »

When she's not wearing her 80’s gear and rocking out as the lead singer of our city employee band, the Black Death Socks (BDS), Breanna Medina is the Emergency Management Coordinator for the city of Rancho Cucamonga, California. I asked Bree about her role and how she's preparing our city to be a resilient community.... Read more »

Since we’ve been talking about media this week, first about the supposed demise, then about what’s coming next, I thought we should talk about how we, as government communicators, can use the new media to help work with the old media. And it’s happening already. Some enterprising government folks are way ahead of you, and... Read more »

This post is a bit of inside baseball, and most of my readers might not get anything out of it. Or maybe I can spin it. (wry smile) So, when US government agencies respond to a disaster or emergency, they’re supposed to organize the response according to the Incident Command System. The part that’s interesting... Read more »

Emergency Management- 5 Minute Survey From the terrible events in Boston to Super Storm Sandy, we have seen the power of digital communications (email, social media, texts etc) during emergencies. In fact, in a recent post one GovLooper discusses how he followed the Boston events, from Twitter to Google Maps, and most of his information... Read more »

Yesterday Dave Lawry and I presented Using Social Media to Communicate Emergency Response at the 2013 APWA North Amercian Snow Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was fun to give the presentation with Dave because he had some interesting first-hand experiences with implementing social media as a communication tool, particularly during snow operations. His stories... Read more »